Rain came down sideways.
Hard. Cold. Relentless.
Jung Min sat beneath the awning of an old rest stop on the outskirts of the Red District—once a holy city, now a smoldering corpse wrapped in neon.
Azari crouched nearby, loading shells into a sawed-off shotgun. Her hands shook less these days.
Not gone. Just buried.
"What was she like?" Azari asked without looking up. "Before the Choir."
"Mira?" Jung Min lit a cigarette. The flame flared against the dark.
"She was sharp. Too sharp. Used to say the Saints didn't need relics. Said faith was just another gun. You load it, aim it, pull the trigger."
He exhaled smoke into the rain.
"She pulled too many times."
Azari paused.
"She was your partner, wasn't she?"
He didn't answer.
Didn't have to.
A bus passed in the distance—engine growling like it was angry to still be running. Someone stared at them from the back window. A flash of white hair. Then gone.
Jung Min crushed the cigarette. Stood.
"They're testing us. Seeing how far we've come."
Azari clicked the shotgun shut. "Let's show them we never left."
They entered the Red District on foot.
Every building glowed with ghost-light—neon prayers, broken holosigns, corrupted scripture scrolling on storefront glass.
Jung Min looked up.
The choir symbols were bleeding into the skyline.
They tracked the signal to an old casino beneath the Saint's Tower.
What was once a sanctuary of fortune now smelled like rot and gun oil.
The doors opened on their own.
Inside, Baek Jihoon waited.
He looked clean. Hair slicked. Suit pressed. Smiling like he'd already won.
"Min," he said, raising a glass. "Still dressing like a funeral."
"You throw enough bodies in the dirt, it becomes a habit."
Azari aimed the shotgun.
Jihoon waved a finger.
The walls groaned.
And then—
Saints stepped out of the shadows.
Not real ones. Echoes.
Ghosts of the order. Memories in armor.
Each one carried the face of someone Jung Min had killed.
Azari whispered, "What the hell are those?"
"Trigger echoes," Jung Min muttered. "Choir's new party trick."
Jihoon raised his glass again.
"I didn't come to fight you, Min. I came to bury you. In your own sins."
The ghosts drew their weapons.
Jung Min drew both pistols.
Azari cocked the shotgun.
Jihoon smiled wider.
The casino lights dimmed—
And the room exploded into chaos.